The last archaeologist? Material culture and contested identities.
Smith, Laurajane
Material culture provides what Buchli (1995) calls `brutally
physical' resources, linked to history and the past, which can be
drawn on in an active process of re/creating cultural identities.
Consequently, the use of material culture as the data of archaeological
research has led to the questioning of archaeologists and their research
practices by groups such as local historical societies, rural
organisations and other community groups, feminists and tourism
interests. In particular, indigenous peoples have contested what was
once an archaeological monopoly of access to their material heritage.
This is also a challenge to archaeological interpretations of the past
which have been, in Australia at least, used to govern aspects of
Aboriginal cultural identity. Archaeological interpretations of the past
are often, through archaeological claims to `scientific' expertise,
used to legitimise or delegitimise Aboriginal claims about cultural
identity.
Ironically, archaeologists have themselves used privileged access
to material culture to define their own disciplinary identity.
Historically, in Australia and elsewhere, they have assumed a pastoral
role as stewards of the material remains of the past, which more
recently has been buttressed by claims to scientific rigour. This has
been very important in distinguishing archaeological research from grave
robbing or quaint antiquarianism. Some of the results of this have been
that the archaeological discipline constructs its own sense of cultural
identity around a privileged access to material culture. For example,
control over significant sites or high status items of material culture
are seen as part and parcel of high status within the discipline.
In 1995 a very public conflict erupted between the Tasmanian
Aboriginal Land Council (TALC) and archaeologists from Melbourne's
La Trobe University over the possession of excavated artefacts. This
article uses the conflict to investigate the way in which archaeologists
have used material culture as a commodity which may be used to confer
power, and how the possession and control of material culture, on the
one hand, and `authority' to `interpret' it, on the other, has
come to underpin the authority of archaeological knowledge about the
past and its governance of cultural identity. Further, the article
explores the extent to which the commodification of material culture as
a resource of power has, itself, allowed a significant challenge not
only to the authority of archaeological knowledge in the governance of
Aboriginal cultural identity, but also to the basic understanding of
what it means to `be' an archaeologist in the 1990s.
Archaeological stewardship and the governance of identity
In Australia, as in many other countries, archaeologists have
established for themselves a position of authority and power over the
disposition and interpretation of material culture, particularly
indigenous material culture (Byrne 1993; Sullivan 1993, 1996). This is
because they have placed themselves at the centre of the processes of
conservation and management of past material culture, variously referred
to as cultural heritage management (CHM) or cultural resource
management--although it must be noted that it has done so among other
forms of expertise, all of which may and do get subsumed within
bureaucratic expediency. In each Australian state, legislation and
policies exist, often drafted by or with the assistance of
archaeologists, that detail and control management processes. Not only
are archaeologists commonly employed in heritage bureaucracies to
administer this legislation and policy, but also, as consultants, they
are often the principal decision makers as to the value and meaning of
material culture and how, or if, it should be preserved and managed.
Historically, archaeologists were able to establish their position
within CHM through explicit claims to scientific expertise, authority
and stewardship over material culture. These claims became particularly
relevant in the late 1960s and 1970s, when public concern over the
destruction of cultural heritage had become a notable issue (Flood 1989;
Mulvaney 1989, 1990). Also at this time, Aboriginal activism had become
increasingly assertive and was effectively using claims to past material
culture and identity to reinforce demands for land rights (Miller 1986).
By the late 1960s and early 1970s, a significant social problem existed
over the management and use of Aboriginal material culture, and
archaeologists were one of the groups of experts that state governments
turned to for a solution to this problem.
Archaeologists had been lobbying governments for legislation to
protect what at the time was referred to as `relics'. As part of
this lobbying, they were asserting for themselves a newly aggressive
identity as `objective' `scientists', underlined by
theoretical innovations from the United States termed the `new' or
processual archaeology. Processual theory successfully advocated that
the discipline drop its long association with history and
epistemologically remodel itself on the natural sciences. Logical
positivism was forcefully advocated as the correct philosophical stance
for archaeologists to strike, and archaeologists became primarily
concerned, at least rhetorically, with the testing of hypotheses through
increasingly rigorous and systematic methodologies. The professed aim of
the `new' archaeology was to develop universal laws or to identify
the general `processes' of human behaviour and cultural development
(see Binford 1962, 1988; Schiffer 1988; Watson et al 1971; and Trigger
1989 who comments on this). Archaeological science claimed stewardship
over the past, particularly indigenous pasts, through its ability to
universalise that past and make it `relevant' to all `mankind'
(e.g. Binford 1962; Flannery 1967; Schiffer 1979).
Two caveats need to be made about this observation. Firstly, the
`culture history' approach, and the influence of Cambridge
archaeology, was not abandoned just because the `New Archaeology'
took on a high status, at least at the level of rhetoric. Secondly, it
should be realised that there is often a disjuncture between theory and
practice in any discipline. The taking up of a particular discursive
theme often has as much to do with persuasion and borrowing perceived
authority invoked by the new theoretical vocabulary as it does with
actually intending to change existing practices.
Nevertheless, the processual theoretical vocabulary was what found
its way into the policy process and was made to do useful work there for
policy makers, at least at the level of appearances. It should also not
be underestimated how warmly many prominent archaeologists of the time
embraced the processual turn and its vigorous scientism. For instance,
Megaw (1966), Jones (1968), Mulvaney (1971a, 1971b) and Golson (cited in
Mulvaney 1971a:373) all stressed the need to incorporate processual
theory into Australian archaeology to make it more relevant and
professional. Megaw (1966) and Mulvaney (quoted in Megaw 1966:301) both
recommended its adoption as a way to avoid parochialism.
Legislation was enacted in most states, including Tasmania, during
the late 1960s and early 1970s. This legislation was either drafted by
archaeologists or was written in close consultation with them (Smith
1996). The new values and methodologies espoused by processual theory
were incorporated into the various Acts, under many of which Aboriginal
material culture was defined as `relics'--that is, as representing
a dead past -- and archaeologists could play a central role in giving
meaning to it.
In this process, archaeological knowledge played a part in the
governance of aspects of Aboriginal cultural identity. The literature on
governmentality, drawing on Foucault's (1991) later work, is useful
for theorising this process. The literature argues that intellectual
knowledge is incorporated into the act of governing populations and
social problems by `rendering the world thinkable, taming its
intractable reality by subjecting it to the disciplined analyses of
thought' (Rose and Miller 1992:182; see also Rose 1991, 1993).
Importantly, this process is based on liberal modernity which stresses
rational universal `truths' (Pavlich 1995). Thus, archaeological
rationality, emphasised by the logical positivism of processualism,
became useful in defining populations (be they indigenous peoples or
other groups) through both their `archaeological' past and the
material culture (or heritage objects) which were defined as
representing their past. Further, the application of `rational'
knowledge explicitly renders the social problems it governs as
non-`political' and thus more tractable.
Archaeological knowledge and values became inextricably tied into
the CHM process and, through CHM, archaeology became, in Rose and
Miller's (1992:175) terms, a `technology of government'. That
is, a body of knowledge and expertise which government and bureaucracies
mobilise to get things done (Dean 1994). Archaeological expertise
determined the value and meaning of Aboriginal cultural heritage, and
archaeological knowledge thus helped to govern the legitimacy of
Aboriginal claims made on the basis of links to the past and cultural
identity, while also depoliticising these claims by redefining them as
technical issues of management (Smith and Campbell 1998).
This process has been strongly challenged by Aboriginal people and
communities who have questioned the appropriateness of archaeological
authority over their heritage and who have demanded that consultation
with communities occur as part of both the management and research
process (e.g. see Ah Kit 1995; Fourmile 1989a, 1989b, 1992; Langford
1983; Organ 1994). In response, heritage agencies and the Australian
Archaeological Association have respectively enacted policies and a code
of ethics that make consultation mandatory. Despite this, Aboriginal
criticism has pointed out that consultation often consists of simply
`telling' Aboriginal communities about research and management
projects and tends to lack any element of negotiation (TALC 1996; see
also Smith 1996 for discussion of this issue). Further, the adherence to
processual theory tends to contradict consultative policies and codes of
ethics (Smith 1995; Thorley 1996). This is because the theory can only,
given the intellectual boundaries it sets for itself, incorporate
knowledge and values constructed within strict logical positive
frameworks. This means that Aboriginal knowledge, values and concerns
often make little practical sense within either a research or a
management process defined by processual `science'. As a
consequence, policies of consultation have not alleviated all Aboriginal
concerns about archaeological access and possession of their material
culture.
In underpinning Aboriginal heritage legislation and the
governmental role of archaeological knowledge, processual theory defines
the intellectual and practical boundaries of any debate or conflict.
Most importantly for archaeology, processual values have ensured that
both management and research archaeology have, as the discipline terms
it, a `relevance'. Although this relevance is never really defined,
it has been a pervasive discourse within the discipline (e.g. Ford 1973;
Fritz 1973; King 1977). In a sense, archaeology is a rather
intellectually insecure discipline. It can seldom really replicate its
experiments or research processes, as excavation is a method that both
reveals information while in effect destroying significant aspects of
the data base. Further, the discipline deals with the intangibilities of
`the past', which makes the desired linkage between archaeology and
the natural sciences problematic. However, the physicality of material
culture renders archaeological knowledge tangible, `evidential' and
thus `real'. The idea that processual theory gives archaeology
relevance is revealing in so far as processual theory gives archaeology
authority, an authority that underpins and is reinforced by its role in
the governance of material culture and the meanings assigned to it. Its
privileged position over the management of material culture assures
access to the data base, and access to those `things' that
symbolise the discipline's `relevance', authority and,
ultimately, its identity as an objective science.
It is, however, at this point that understanding archaeology as a
technology of government fails to make sense of the subsequent
challenging of archaeological authority by Aboriginal people. As various
commentators have noted (Curtis 1995; O'Malley 1996; Smith and
Campbell 1998), the governmentality literature tends to over-privilege
the authority of knowledge, to overly abstract resources of power, and
has yet to deal with the consequences of contestation of expert
knowledge. In Tasmania, Aboriginal organisations were able to subvert
archaeological authority by repossessing their material culture--what
had previously been a tangible resource of power for others now became a
strategic resource for Aboriginal people.
The Last Tasmanian: an exercise in the governance of Aboriginal
identity
The governmental role that archaeological knowledge has played over
Aboriginal identity is well illustrated by the incorporation of
archaeological research into the 1978 film The Last Tasmanian.
Understanding the history and effect of this film is also important for
understanding the nature, significance and ironies of the subsequent
TALC/La Trobe affair.
The Last Tasmanian, made by Tom Haydon, was based on research by
Rhys Jones (ARTIS 1978; Haydon 1978; Jones 1992) and had significant
consequences for public and policy perceptions of Tasmanian Aboriginal
identity. The film tells the story of Tasmanian `prehistory' and
European contact and occupation, and it met with extensive and varied
critical attention. One review reported that audiences were `stunned and
horrified' by the revelation of what the film terms `the most
complete case of genocide of a whole race in recorded history'
(quoted in Daniels and Murnane 1978). It won a prestigious Logie award in 1979 for the best documentary (Jones 1992), critical acclaim in the
UK (Raven 1978) and in the Australian media (ARTIS 1978).
As well as revealing the horrendous contact history of Tasmania,
the film incorporated Jones' theory that the Tasmanian pre-contact
past represented a `paradox' for human cultural development. Jones
argued that Aboriginal material culture represented degeneration and
maladaptation rather than technological progression or stasis (1971a,
1971b, 1977a, 1977b, 1978a). This was due, he argued, to the maladaptive effects of cultural isolation caused by the separation of Tasmania from
the mainland by rising post-glacial sea-levels (Jones 1978a:21). The
film inadvertently supported popular public perceptions that the
Tasmanians were a `dying race' and doomed to die out despite
European occupation (Bickford 1979; Sykes 1979). It also redefined
contemporary Tasmanian Aboriginal people as `Aboriginal
descendants' or `Straitsmen' and argued that Truganini, who
died in 1876, was in fact `the last Tasmanian' (see also ABC 1979;
Haydon 1979; Jones 1978b).
The release of the film corresponded with an increase in the
Aboriginal political public profile in Tasmania--archaeological science
in the form of a popular documentary jeopardised, however much they did
not intend to, Aboriginal political recognition and legitimacy. The film
became a powerful medium through which archaeological knowledge was
mobilised in a public arena, and gave support and credibility to public
and policy perceptions that Tasmanian Aborigines did not exist. This
point nicely demonstrates Pixley's (1993) observation that
`progressive' discourses or interventions, once in the public or
policy arena, can take directions, and have consequences, far removed
from the original intentions of their originators.
The film was vigorously defended by Haydon and Jones from criticism
by Aboriginal people and from some archaeologists. For Jones, the film
told the story of the Tasmanian archaeological record and provided a
warning tale about the effects of `closed systems' and the overuse of `energy and other resources':
It is possible that one of the options open to us for our own survival will
be to devise steady state systems both economically and in terms of use of
resources. We must learn as much as we can of the operation of such systems
in the past and how to avoid their terrible limitations. Will the closed
world of the Tasmanians become an allegory on a small scale of the fate of
man, bounded also by the limits of his own globe? (Jones 1978b:21)
This assertion of the significance of the film and its
archaeological story is underlain by the processual rhetoric of
`relevance'--Aboriginal Tasmanian culture history is made
universally relevant and tractable via the auspices of science, and
consequently more readily governed. As Lehman (1991:10) reports, the
film also gave popular support to the denial of land rights and implied
that Aboriginal culture was an `invention of the present ... In this
way, the invaders have not only stolen our land, but also seek to claim
Aboriginal heritage as theirs: a scientific resource which becomes the
property of the researcher.'
In this process, archaeological knowledge not only gave scientific
authority and evidence to popular white assumptions about the identity
of present-day Tasmanian Aboriginal people, it also reinforced
archaeological claims and access to material culture. This occurred
through claims to archaeological scientific objectivity and the assumed
inherent international scientific values of the archaeological data.
Archaeological knowledge was both allowing itself to be used by policy
makers and government and simultaneously constituting itself as the
authority responsible for the stewardship of a material culture. This
was done by defining that material culture as no longer existing within
an ongoing cultural context.
The last archaeologist?
The enactment of the Aboriginal Relics Act 1975 (Tas) established
the authority of archaeology in Tasmanian CHM. This Act was written in
consultation with archaeologists and, by defining `relics' (and
thus Aboriginal material culture) as only existing prior to 1876,
reinforced the idea of archaeological experts speaking for a `dead
past' (Smith 1996). The Last Tasmanian reinforced the usefulness of
archaeology in governing public perceptions of Aboriginal identity, and
thus the role of archaeology as a technology of government in Tasmania
was established by the late 1970s. However, Aboriginal activists and
community groups continued to question the authority and role of
archaeology in interpreting their past. This continual challenging
finally led to a significant alteration in Tasmanian CHM processes.
While The Last Tasmanian cemented the scientific authority of
archaeological knowledge, it also, paradoxically, began to undermine
that authority as well. It stimulated strong Aboriginal response and
reassertions of their identity--in effect, archaeological knowledge,
while supporting governmental policies, failed to depoliticise the issue
of Aboriginality. The film helped to focus Aboriginal interventions on
public perceptions of their non-existence, and Aboriginal people
continued to lobby government for control over their heritage.
In response to continuing Aboriginal activism, a certain `goal
creep' (McGowan 1995) occurred with respect to Aboriginal heritage
policies. By the mid-1990s, changes in CHM Aboriginal consultation
policies by the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service (responsible for
cultural heritage) had resulted in a situation whereby policy extended
the boundaries of practice set by legislative requirements (McGowan
1992, 1995). In effect, Aboriginal consultation and issues became a
central focus in the Tasmanian government's CHM policies. This
ultimately contributed to a significant conflict over the possession of
artefacts, in which the resources-of power in CHM were redeployed and
renegotiated.
Both the minister and the acting director of the PWS were later to
publicly state during the TALC/La Trobe affair that archaeological
values need not prevail in this matter (Cleary 1995; Pearce in Maslen
1995b:53). The minister, at least, saw the privileging of consultation
issues in the management processes as part of Aboriginal
`empowerment': `There is a movement towards enfranchising
Aboriginal communities with respect to their heritage and which requires
consultation with the Aboriginal community by archaeologists'
(Cleary 1995).
The position of archaeology as a technology of government in
Tasmania had started to shift during the early 1990s. By the end of 1995
the authority of archaeological knowledge has been significantly
challenged.
In 1995, Allen and Murray, leading and supervising academics of La
Trobe University's long-term Southern Forest Archaeological Project
(SFAP) announced that this research had been jeopardised, if not ended
(e.g. Maslen 1995a). They went further to suggest that archaeology in
Australia as a whole was under threat due to the actions of PWS cultural
heritage managers, the Tasmanian Minister for Environment and Land
Management, and the TALC over an application to extend research permits
(see Hawes 1995a; Maslen 1995a, 1995b; Morell 1995; Murray 1995; Murray
and Allen 1995).
Permits to excavate, analyse and remove material interstate from
four sites as part of the SFAP expired in 1991 and 1992 (Allen 1995a;
Olney 1995). Applications to extend these permits were denied by the
minister (Allen 1995a; Auty 1995). Following PWS policy, the TALC was
asked to comment on the application for renewal and, according to documents quoted in Allen's (1995a) summary of events, advised that
the permits should not be extended, ostensibly because they had had long
enough to analyse the material and the permits had expired some time
previously (see also Hawes 1995b). A number of Aboriginal commentators
were highly critical of archaeologists' attitudes to consultation,
which they characterised as an attempt at obtaining `a rubber
stamp' (TALC 1996; Mansell 1995; West quoted in Maslen 1995b:54).
The TALC may have also seen this as an opportunity to test the policy
changes of the PWS (Darby 1995a).
Responding to a perception that the material would not be returned,
the TALC then took legal action to have the material removed to
Tasmania. The minister intervened and the material was returned (Auty
1995; Dubdale 1995). The removal of the artefacts from La Trobe was
described in the media with polemic about the `death of
archaeology' and the `threat' this event posed to
`archaeological science'. Allen (1995b) characterised the return of
the material as `the greatest act of scientific and cultural vandalism
yet seen in this country'. The then Australian Archaeological
Association president, cited in the Weekend Australian, is reported to
have stated that the disposal of the artefacts before they had been
fully analysed would `result in the effective vandalism of these highly
significant sites and destruction of extremely important and valuable
archaeological information' and described the removal of the
artefacts as a `serious' one for science (Ross quoted in Hawes
1995a). These, and similar statements, have a tradition in archaeology
and tend to be employed when access to data is threatened, the best
example being Mulvaney's reported likening of the return of human
remains to the Tasmanian Aboriginal community in 1984 to Nazi book
burning (cited in Duncan 1984a; see, for instance, Mulvaney 1981, 1991;
Duncan 1984b).
These responses are clearly underlain by processual theoretical
assumptions about the nature of `science'. Not only is the
`interference' of non-scientists (bureaucrats and Aboriginal
people) seen as a threat and an act of `vandalism' against science,
but one of the arguments against the return of the material (and one
widely circulated in the media) was also that the material belongs to
all `mankind', for instance:
These sites, three of which were first occupied more than 30,000 years ago,
represent part of the universal history of humans and should be a source of
history and pride to all Australians, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal alike.
The human and non-human archaeological samples taken from them have been
transformed by years of scientific study into unique documents which
illuminate our common human history. Their wanton destruction for political
or neo-spiritual objectives will destroy knowledge...As such, it is an
extreme form of censorship. (Allen 1995b; see also Allen quoted in Maslen
1995a:31; Murray quoted in Braund 1995; see also Akerman 1995; Darby 1995b;
Ferguson 1995; Gregory 1995; Hawes 1995a, 1995b; Launceston Examiner 1995a,
1995b)
While Australian archaeologists have, in recent years, willingly
returned skeletal material and religious artefacts to Aboriginal
communities, this was the first time that issues of ownership had been
played out with respect to secular cultural material. As the journalist
Darby (1995a:11) states, `there has never been such a contest over
material that is neither human nor sacred but simply cultural'.
Allen and Murray both argued that the material was `garbage' -- the
remains of day-to-day activities and was not sacred, and they
continually emphasised in the media that no human remains occurred among
the material (ABC 1995; Akerman 1995; Allen 1995b; Darby 1995a; Maslen
1995a, 1995b; Murray and Allen 1995). The implication is that this
material is only significant to science, a position opposed by the TALC
(1996) who argued that the proclamations about the scientific
significance and universal importance of the material worked only to
deny their cultural custodianship and any values they hold for the
material. The threat to archaeological stewardship posed by Aboriginal
demands to control the material was emphasised in this case because it
was secular material that was being claimed--in effect, the basic data
of archaeology.
The discipline's public reaction to the TALC/La Trobe conflict
has been mixed--some supportive of Murray and Allen (e.g. Gait 1995;
Wright 1995), others critical (e.g. Hope 1995). Concern has been raised
over `what would happen to Australian archaeology' after this
affair and close attention has been given to the assertion that
Australian archaeologists were deserting research in Aboriginal
archaeology and going overseas or turning to historical archaeology (e.g. Cosgrove in ABC 1995; Feary and Smith 1995; Maslen 1995a; Murray
1995; Wright 1995).
These perceptions, and the degree of attention they have received,
reveal a significant undercurrent of unease in Australian archaeology
over events in Tasmania. This is not simply because of specific
contingencies in the situation, but also because the affair signals a
wider change in relationships between Aboriginal people, archaeologists,
politicians, courts and bureaucracies. The authority of archaeological
science was jeopardised by the forced return of artefacts to Tasmania.
By challenging this authority, the underpinnings of disciplinary
identity were also jeopardised. Many archaeologists believe in rigorous
science, and its inherent intellectual authority, and expect to have
`rights' over material culture often denied to others. Challenge
that authority by removing access to data, and what it `means' to
`be' an archaeologist becomes open to critical scrutiny.
This shift in power could not be prevented by arguments about the
significance of the material to science; in a sense, Murray and Allen
were constrained in the arguments they could make. Similar arguments
(e.g. Chippindale 1985; Cribb 1990; Derriman 1990; Mulvaney 1991;
Stannard 1988) had previously failed to stop the reburial of the Kow
Swamp remains, the return of the Murray Black collection and the return
of Mungo woman--but they were still invoked in this affair. This is
because the parameters for any debate on heritage issues were set by the
earlier embedding of processual philosophy within heritage legislation,
archaeological regulatory practices, and archaeological perceptions
about the nature and aims of CHM. Thus, in a certain sense, it is
expected by bureaucracies and governments that archaeologists will
respond in certain ways, and it is reasonable that archaeologists will
respond to these expectations. The institutionalisation of archaeology
as a technology of government, and sustaining the discipline's role
in this process, requires that archaeologists invoke the authority of a
positivist science previously privileged in the legislation--which is
precisely what Murray and Allen attempted to do. If they had not invoked
this discourse, their arguments would have had little legitimacy, given
the intellectual confines set for archaeology by its position as a
technology of government and by the disciplinary identity this role
conferred and reinforced. In effect, the theoretical development,
discourses and concepts employed within the discipline generally have
themselves become `governed' and constrained by the need to
maintain positivistic notions of science that had come to underpin
archaeological identity, authority and access to the data base.
In this case, however, archaeological claims to expertise were
subverted and made irrelevant by the TALC's repossession of their
artefacts, a repossession made possible, ironically enough, through a
technicality of the very heritage laws that had originally privileged
archaeological values and knowledge. The dispossession of the
archaeologists meant a loss of a significant commodity of power, their
data and the material representation of archaeological authority,
expertise and ultimately disciplinary identity.
Conclusion: material culture as a commodity of power
The authority of archaeological knowledge in the CHM process had
been given tangibility--made brutally physical--by archaeological
control and possession of material culture. Embedded in the possession
and control through management of material culture were the processual
values and perspectives of archaeological positivistic science. The
processual conceptualisation of the nature of archaeological knowledge
and research practices have become symbolised in the archaeological
possession of material culture, a process reinforced daily through the
practices of CHM. In short, material culture had been commodified as a
resource of power--a rather ironical situation for archaeologists who
have often condemned the economic commodification of material culture by
tourist groups (Fowler 1987) and what Hewison (1987) defines as the
`heritage industry'.
The commodification of material culture as a resource of power
helped to physically reinforce archaeological claims to authority in CHM
and in interpreting the past. This in turn reinforced processual
discourse and concepts within the discipline. Processual theory has
become almost the `default' intellectual position within Australian
archaeology due to, firstly, the authority it provided in controlling
access to material culture, and, secondly, the extent to which it had
become institutionalised within CHM.
Ironically, it was the commodification of material culture as a
resource of power that ultimately allowed the Tasmanian Aboriginal
community to challenge archaeological authority and subvert it by
reclaiming possession of that material culture. The way in which
material culture had been conceptualised by processual theory in CHM
enabled the intangible concepts of archaeological `expertise' and
`knowledge' to be made tangible and, ultimately, a definable target
in any challenge to archaeological authority.
A further irony of the situation is that what the claims of
archaeological scientists for possession of items of material culture
really highlight is that these claims are as much cultural--that is,
creating cultures through linking identity to objects and what they
represent--as they are for Indigenous people. While the TALC
repossession of the disputed artefacts may mark both an actual and
symbolic challenge to archaeological identity, it offers a positive
opportunity for archaeologists. With this challenge, the old processual
claims to authority have been shown to have failed in maintaining access
to the data base. No longer can appeals to `scientific rights' be
seen as necessarily useful in any conflict. The `need' to maintain
processual discourse and concepts to maintain authority has been both
exposed and shown to be no longer relevant in conflicts over access.
Archaeologists may themselves wish to contest the `governance' of
the discipline's values, concepts and identity. The opportunity
presents itself to re-examine and redefine the aims and conceptual
underpinnings of archaeological research and management.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Gary Campbell commented on drafts of this article. A draft was
presented at the Objects of Belonging Conference, University of Western
Sydney, Sydney, 1997.
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